ABSTRACT

I want to begin by interrogating what may be the strangest—and apparently least recognized—biblical allusion in Shakespeare’s plays. In Antony and Cleopatra, Cleopatra, as she is about to take the asp to her breast, instructs her attendant Iras, “Give me my robe. Put on my crown. I have / Immortal longings in me. Now no more / The juice of Egypt’s grape shall moist this lip.” 1 She dresses for death and asserts either that she feels the longings of a goddess or longings for immortality, or both. But strikingly for Shakespeare’s audience, though she herself cannot know it, she paraphrases in the fourth sentence what Christ is reported to say in the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke: “Verely I say vnto you, I wil drinke no more of the frute of the vine, vntil that day, that I drinke it new in the kingdome of God” (Mark’s version, 14:15, in the Geneva translation). In Mark and Matthew Christ, also going toward death, has just taken up a cup of wine and declared that it is his blood, which will be shed for his disciples. Luke places the words just before Christ gives the bread and wine as his body and blood. 2 The juice of Egypt’s grape has of course played a large role in what we have seen of the love affair of Antony and Cleopatra, so its renunciation now would seem to acquire significance. Cleopatra would appear to bear no conceptual relation to Christ, much less any resemblance; her self-inflicted death does not appear to have religious significance, let alone any salvific effect for Antony, who has preceded her in death, or for Iras and Charmian, both of whom die with her.